Detroit Pistons Head Coach and President of Basketball Operations Stan Van Gundy has no regrets about the team’s decision to trade for 28-year-old power forward Blake Griffin, despite his nasty injury history. From Nick Friedell of ESPN:

“Our thinking was this: The hardest thing to do in this league is to get a proven star,” Van Gundy said after Tuesday’s shootaround. “It’s just very hard to do. It’s hard to do in free agency. It’s hard to do in trades. You get very few opportunities to do it.

“The guy’s a five-time All-Star. He’s been an All-NBA guy, [one of] top 15 guys in the league. He’s only 28 years old. We know the injury history — that’s the risk on it. But that risk was worth it because of the talent we’re bringing back.”

Van Gundy has a point; it’s rare to have the opportunity to pry a talent like Griffin away from a team, and Detroit has never been a big free-agent destination.

Van Gundy also offered some advice to his new star player: Be yourself. From Keith Langlois of NBA.com:

My only point to him is I don’t want that ‘trying to fit in thing’ to be what he does on the court. I’ve seen that happen to guys. They’re a little reluctant to have the ball in their hands or be too aggressive offensively. Everybody in there knows, that’s what he was brought here to do. He needs to just play his game. That’s why we brought him here.”

The Pistons acquired Griffin, along with Brice Johnson and Willie Reed, in exchange for Tobias Harris, Avery Bradley, Boban Marjanovic, a protected-first-round pick in 2018 and a second-round pick in 2019.

Prior to being traded, Griffin was averaging 22.6 points, 7.9 rebounds and a career-high 5.4 assists per game on 44.1 percent shooting this season. He’s also shooting 34.2 percent from 3-point range on a career-high 5.7 attempts per game.

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